Jello: The Jell-O Museum, Le Roy, NY

It doesn’t get more American than Jell-O. Maybe a deep-fried Oreo, but those don’t have beloved comedian Bill Cosby as its spokesperson, nor do they have the ability to be cut into the shape of a stegosaurus. Jell-O is as American as it gets.

IT'S ALIVE!

 Jello took shape under the ownership of cough syrup manufacturer Pearle Bixby Wait in Le Roy, New York, now home to the Jell-O Museum, a celebration of all things wiggly and fruit flavored. Wait claims responsibility for adding fruity flavoring to the plain powder and branding the product “Jell-O.” Americans were slow to warm up to the product, but some slick guerilla marketing tactics involving the Kewpies and strategically placed adverts in women’s magazines gave the new confection some cache, and America ate it up.

In the 1950s, Americans decided that consuming Jell-O only as a dessert item was simply not frequent enough, so the company began manufacturing savory flavors, including celery, Italian, and seasoned tomato, all of which sound pretty gross to us but you can’t hate them for trying something different. In the time of the picture perfect all-American family, salad probably looked really good in a bundt-cake mold on a lot of dining room tables.

Sounds...healthy?

 The museum contains dozens of vintage adverts for the product, many depicting the “Jell-O Girl,” a LeRoy local who posed in ads for Jello for years (until she became old and dried up like most child stars and could only get work in infomercials.) She was eventually replaced by a giraffe and then, the most famous man in comedy/pudding, Bill Cosby.

The Jell-O girl in her glory days.

The museum takes you through Jell-O’s history and the way it revolutionized cooking in the American household – it was one of the first “instant” foods created. Now there is an entire aisle dedicated to foods prepared in under ten minutes, but at its inception, Jell-O was unique. 

Here are some randomly weird things we learned about Jell-O:

- People could serve Jell-O 69,089 ways over 189 years and still not exhaust all the ways to serve Jell-O.

- Jell-O and brain matter produce similar waves when tested on an EEG machine.

- Utah residents purchase more Jell-O than those of any other state.

- The most popular flavor of Jell-O is strawberry.

Whether it's your favorite dessert or something you believe should be reserved for when you have your wisdom teeth out, there is no denying Jell-O is steadfastly American and delightfully weird.

Birthday: The Harry Houdini Museum, Scranton, PA

“Where do you want to be on your birthday?” Alex asked in early June.

I honestly hadn’t even thought about it. I wanted a low-key day and to be outside, weather permitting. Anyone who gets worked up about their birthday past age 21 is a self-obsessed asshole. I wanted a very normal day, just the two of us.

We planned to be in Niagara Falls on my birthday, but a serious car repair held us up and we only made it as far as eastern New York by the 21st. The birthday locale of Niagara Falls became Scranton, PA, the setting of one of our favorite television shows, The Office, and home to the Harry Houdini Museum. I figured, if anything, it would certainly make for a memorable birthday, as there was the potential I could get sawed in half.

The museum advertised daily tours and magic shows, beginning with an overview of Houdini’s life and career as the greatest magician in the world. For years, the museum was in a brownstone in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but when the landlord decided to nearly triple their rent, the curators searched for another, more affordable location. They decided on Scranton, as the northern Pennsylvania city was a major stop on Houdini’s tour circuit. The museum owns hundreds of Houdini artifacts — sets of locks and keys, tour posters, and even his straight jacket. At an auction several years ago, the museum acquired the portraits of Houdini’s parents that hung in his New York City home.

Houdini's parents. The recent acquisition of these thought-lost pictures was a source of pride for the museum.

Another recent acquisition, this from the home of one Jerry Sandusky.

The museum is run by two seasoned magicians, John Bravo and Dorothy Dietrich. Revered as “the first lady of magic.” Dietrich is a master escapologist. She can free herself from handcuffs and straightjackets, once slipping from a confines of a straightjacket at 15 stories high as she dangled from a burning rope. She was also the first woman to successfully perform the bullet catch, clutching a .22 caliber bullet in her mouth. The stunt has killed 12 men in the past. Not even Houdini would attempt the feat.

With gold-blonde hair and an infallible smile, Dorothy's long career is betrayed by her youthful looks. She is incredibly kind, and as Bravo showed us around the museum, Dorothy gave me a beaming smile and a, "Happy birthday!" I'm not one for big birthday embarrassment - the tiara, shot glass around the neck, being serenaded by a group of Applebee's waitresses? No, thanks. But this year, my birthday surprise was different. In the middle of the magic show, she called me onstage, introducing me to the audience as a disciple of magic myself. (Just to be clear, I couldn’t pull a card trick on a dog.)

I climbed onstage and was handed a red napkin which I was instructed to wave around in various motions as I danced. I can’t dance for shit, so my moves were punctuated by nervous, embarrassed laughter. With the simple placement inside a black velour bag and a few choice words, the paper napkin transformed into an origami rose. A few more words and the paper rose became a plastic rose, right in my hand. I couldn’t see how she did it, and it kind of scared me to have something in my hand suddenly become something else.

Then Dorothy told me to reach into the velour sack once more. I stuck my hand inside and pulled out a beautiful, white dove. It was only a few seconds after the bird was resting on my pointer finger that I felt something warm and wet in my hand. I looked down. The beautiful bird had pooped in my hand. I couldn’t fling it off in front of an audience, though there were a few kids in the front row who looked like they could have used it. There was nothing to wipe it on and no way to excuse myself to go to the bathroom to wash the watery shit off my palm. So I just stood there onstage, cupping the dove and my shit-filled hand, nervously grinning.

The bird was returned to its cage and I was dismissed from the stage with my two flowers. I sat back down, turned to Alex and opened my hand.

“What is that? Is that shit? Did the bird shit in your hand?”

We both laughed, mostly because I am exactly the kind of person who would hold a dove  in a magic show on her birthday, only to have it drop a slimy turd into my hand.

After a child was levitated and a man split in two, the show concluded. We hung around to snap some photos and chat with Dorothy, who is one of the most genuine people I have ever met. It might sound like the perfect birthday for your average nine-year-old, but it was one of the most fun birthdays I’ve ever had. Even with the handful of shit.

Alexa's Prologue

I always knew my roots would never grow deep in New York. It was like a boyfriend you dated for one swift summer, always aware that it wouldn’t be permanent because it was too dangerous and had no intentions of treating you the way you deserved to be treated. I liked the way people’s eyes burst when I said the words “New York.” It was the thing to do in your early 20s, the big, bad city. Everything up until my first day there told me so, and they never gave any bad advice on Sex and the City, right?

Like so many other fevered, underdeveloped dreams-turned-realities of life in New York City, mine began with a waitressing stint and a full-time internship. The internship, at a weekly newspaper in Queens, eventually transformed into a reporting job, devolving quickly into the polar plunge that was my welcome into the working world. Every task went unthanked, and nights and weekends were abandoned to attend an advertiser’s event at the sacrifice of true journalism. Stories that had the potential to bother an advertiser (i.e. anything revealing the seedy underbelly of major redevelopment projects, including those forcing businesses and long-term residents to relocate). Under the thumb of a ruthless mother and son publishing team, the tenured Editor-in-Chief bowed to their every whim. The phrase “what can I do?” will probably be engraved on this woman’s tombstone.

A string of bad luck throughout my formative years taught me to believe one, everlasting truth -- everything, even the worst experience/job/relationship imaginable, is worth it if you make it through having learned something. It means it wasn’t a waste.

While I survived with a newly formed sense of professional reality, I resigned in a mild-worded email. That doesn’t mean I didn’t hallucinate about the ultimate resignation letter.

“Dear Mrs. and Junior Employer,

I thank you greatly for the opportunity to work here over the past year and some odd months. It truly has been a lesson in humility, degradation and above all else, a blaring introduction into the professional world. Without your mistreatment, I truly wouldn’t know what it is to be an adult in 21st century America, and for that, I am forever indebted.

As a bright-eyed, albeit naive, 22-year-old, I didn’t know that the vast majority of those in power achieved their status because of greed. You didn’t battle your way to the top in a string of morally sound ventures. You crushed every tiny soul under your bloated vision of wealth and glory.

To quote a former co-worker who shall remain anonymous at the behest of retaining his position, “If you showed your employees a tenth of an iota of an ounce of the compassion you think you do, then you might have a chance at being the great humanitarian you think you are.” While many of your employees struggled to pay hospital bills, student loans and college tuitions, you dressed your infant son in a fur-lined sweater and purchased a million dollar penthouse overlooking the Manhattan skyline. You took advantage of people’s desperate situations during a desperate time. A French monarch did the same thing in the 18th century, and it didn’t turn out so well.

It doesn’t matter how many galas you throw, dressed in multicolored fur like the Cruella de Vil that you are, or how many times you use the word “fabulous” to describe everything from the underpaid staff who organize your events to the luxury automobile(s) you so generously slip under company expenses. You once “accidentally” referred to readers as “customers,” adjusting your mistake only after it had been pointed out to you. You would rather sell people the stories you and your advertisers want them to read than give people the real news. If a meaningful story makes its way past four layers of scrutiny, only then is it shoved to the back of the book. Poor people and minorities can’t pay for prime space, I guess.

Remember when you made the editor change the cover because there was someone of an ethnic minority on it?

Remember when you sent me to an event that wasn’t even happening, twice in one week?

I’d insert the Youtube link for Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way,” but figured it wasn’t worth inconveniencing one of your five assistants to help you open it. Basically, loving you is definitely not the right thing to do.

Hugs and Kisses,
Alexa

P.S. I know exactly how long it takes the art department to airbrush your neck.

I became a writer because I wanted to tell people’s untold stories, those of people who otherwise might not have a voice. Instead, my passion was tooled to help the wealthy become even wealthier.

So I left, choosing to preserve my principals over my paycheck. I owed the world more than well-written advertisements for expensive Catholic schools and home furnishings. Thankfully, with Alex expressing similar disinterest towards continuing a life in New York, the idea for the American Weirdness project came together seamlessly. We packed our earthly goods, said goodbye to some of the greatest co-workers/friends we had ever met and let our wanderlust take hold. We were born to run.

This post, and subsequently most of this blog, is dedicated to anyone who refuses to settle and anyone who grants themselves the experience of discovery.